I used a VBScript and WMI in my last job. Responsibiities are more segregated where I am now and that would be an IT function. They use SCOM, but I'm not sure how much event log monitoring it has available.

I appreciate the insight into what others are doing. I think I would prefer to use SCOM but it's not available in the current shop unfortunately. I settled on LogParser.exe which can pull Event Logs directly into a SQL Server database table. I do the necessary inspection on the table and email a report of interesting events from a stored proc which I call after calling LogParser.exe. All of the steps are tied together by a PowerShell script which is scheduled to run nightly. It's a homegrown solution to be sure, but I built the PowerShell script to read a set of servers from a text file so it scales out nicely for this environment where there are lots of servers and some are coming online others are going offline on a regular basis.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community. --Plato